Chain pubs - your views?

[General Staal]

How do you feel about the big chains? Went out for a drink with Soupy last night, only to discover that Sizzling are encroaching on my area from the west with three pubs falling into their hands.

I am not overly keen on Sizzling, but one pub that looks about to fall to them was actually quite nice.

I am also not keen on most Wetherspoons, but, on the whole am quite attached to Ember.

Do you think that chains are destroying the quirky local, replacing them with soulless clone pubs, or are they the saviour of real ales by bringing them to the mass market?

I am undecided...

[Soup Dragon]

Don't M&B own Sizzling, Ember, Vintage and a few others? The Drum was simply being converted from one M&B chain to another!

[General Staal]

Don't M&B own Sizzling, Ember, Vintage and a few others? The Drum was simply being converted from one M&B chain to another!

Still have different 'personalities'. Anyway, you have not answered the question. And you have not reviewed the pubs from last night. I have just reviewed the Plough and Harrow in Mere Green.

[Soup Dragon]

sorry, mate - just off to do a couple of pubs, then shifnal tomorrow!

[Alesonly]

Don't M&B own Sizzling, Ember, Vintage and a few others? The Drum was simply being converted from one M&B chain to another!

Yes your right M & B own them and a lot more awful Pubs as well all listed below which I borrowed of there own web site. The only ones I use out that lot is Nicholson's very Occasionally In my opinion M&B are one of the worst Chains for wrecking good Pubs even worst than G/K



At a glance Our brands & formats Brands & formats overview

Alex, All Bar One, Browns, Classics, Community pubs, Crown Carveries, Ember Inns, Harvester, Hollywood Bowl, Innkeeper's Lodge, Metro Professionals, Miller & Carter, Music bars Flares, Reflex & Babylon, Nicholson's, O'Neill's, Premium Country Dining Group, Scream, Sizzling Pub Co, Toby Carvery, Town pubs, Village Pub & Kitchen, Vintage Inns

[Soup Dragon]

Thanks Alesonly - it doesn't make pretty reading does it

I dont have a problem so much with gastroy-chainy pubs, it is just the fact that in some areas - Solihull and Sutton for example - they are rammed out with them and the little local/town pub has gone

[Oggwyn Trench]

Bankss ruined a lot of pubs round here in the 80s and 90s when it was expanding , most of them are now souless barns .

Brunning and Price are a decent chain though they are now owned by the same group who own the Frankie and Benny resturant chain , most of there pubs stock at least 6 real ales mostly local and the food is usually locally sourced and high quality .

[NickDavies]

Brunning and Price are part of The Restaurant Group, who as well as Frankie and Benny's and Garfunkel's were also responsible for the dreadful Blubecker's chain. Notice the faux-American names. Blubeckers, like the others, was perfectly suited to ring-road retail parks, but perfectly hopeless in rural villages. The one near us (http://www.pubsgalore.co.uk/pubs/35503/) lasted about a year. However in a brilliant example of scales falling from corporate eyes they've walked away from Blubecker's completely and converted them to the B&P format, branded Home Counties Pub Restaurants, and they're not at all bad.

[oldboots]

Probably the only thing that can be said in their favour is you know (roughly) what you're going to get, they all have the corporate look and style and presumably their own target customers which is why M&B rebrand to another in their "portfolio" if the current one doesn't pull in enough 18-30s or family diners or whatever. I hate almost all pub chains with avengence, 'spoons is ok because of price and the range of ales but then maybe I'm in their target group however I still don't go in a 'spoons unless there's no better option. The best pub group I know is Market Town Taverns but they've only got about a dozen pubs.

[Farway]

Round here there are a few chain pubs, but generally I think they are much better than some of the grot holes they replaced. I suspect the "Golden age" of wonderful local pubs, with a happy "mine host" & buxom barmaids are just a folk memory, the reality for many was a surly guv'nor, flat or bad beer and bag of crisps if you were lucky

Turning them into a Harvester etc was a boon for many a customer, and whilst CAMRA & co may not be happy, the profits speak for themselves

That said, I have just returned from a trip to Portsmouth & Southsea, never went in a chain pub, had great pints in 2 with a lovely home made chicken curry in another washed down with Isle of Wight brewed ale, all locals and independent

[arwkrite]

In the main chain pubs work for the magority of people. If it was not so they would not exist.The pubs in my town are all managed or tennanted and you would take them for traditional country style pubs ( if such a thing exists ) housed in old attractive buildings. Beef Chilli or Chicken Curry is as exotic as it gets and thats only if they feel like doing food. The big chains will feed you,here you take your chance. Some allow you too take your dog / cat/ polish fighting bear in, others dont. Try doing that in a Harvester or Wetherspoons.
These days walking into a Banks Barn of a Pub is a rare thing for me. I do not dislike ALL chain pubs , it depends on the individual pub. I have been known to dislike the odd freehouse. Usually this is because of ex Wing Commander type of licencee who does not like a Citroen mixing with the BMW/ Mercedes on his car park. Lowers the tone doncha ya know.

rambling Arwkrite ambles off in search of a bacon sandwich.

[Kake]

Mitchells & Butlers also have a "secret" unbranded brand, the internal name for which appears to be "Castle". We first discovered this via suspiciously-similar menus, then noticed that the pubs in this brand all have websites designed on the same template. A bit of digging on Google revealed a PDF on the M&B website which gave us the Castle name. Partial list of Castle pubs here. (http://london.randomness.org.uk/wiki.cgi?Category_Castle_Pubs)

[NickDavies]

They do that. There's another now called Country Pub and Eating House, see for example the Derby Arms (http://www.thederbyarmsepsom.co.uk/) in Epsom. They were mostly Vintage Inns, and at one stage they tried to debrand them completely, but the Terms and Conditions link that M&B always put at the bottom of its websites helpfully sent you to a firm called Landmark Leisure, corporate address 27 Fleet St Birmingham. No prizes for guessing who lives there.

When TRG was dumping its Blubecker's brand (see above) the websites had no sign of corporate ownership at all and you had to do a Nominet whois lookup to discover the domain name registrant was Brunning and Price.

[Roz The Oz]

I went to the Chilworth Arms near Southampton tonight, part of the Country Pubs and Eating Houses Chain and was really disappointed - busy gastro pub serving a huge number of covers each day but as they buy in bulk for the whole chain have not got the ability to deal with individual need and not at all interested. I have coeliac disease and was made to feel like a second class citizen as they do not cater at all for a gluten free diet unless it is a food that is already so such as risotto. The others had bread with their starter, not me! The others having cheese and biscuit had that - I was offered just the cheese!
In Dartmoor two weeks ago went to a great pub called the Church House Inn at Holn - they had great local beer and cider and even gluten free chips!!
I know I won't bother with the Chilworth Arms again. Really fed up with this blinkered approach.

[arwkrite]

I have found some hospitals unable to supply specialist diets prescribed by their doctors, what chance have you with pub grub ?
For these special items to be available you will often find the person in charge has a personal interest ,for whatever reason, in supplying them. Perhaps a family member or they themselves suffer from a condition that requires a special diet. I would think the average awareness of dietary problems is quite low when applied to bar and restaurant staff. Much the same on the High street. My town only has one baker making gluten free bread and I believe that is for special order.
Unless you are a fit and normally shaped Human Being you tend to cause problems to others who have difficulty in thinking " outside the box ". I just love that look of puzzlement on their faces.

[Farway]

It's not just pubs that are unable to cope with non bog standard, we went to a big Christmas dinner do in a restaurant, the vegetarian option was normal Christmas platter, but they took the turkey off, cue Meldrew moment of "I don't believe it"

Place long since closed unsurprisingly

[Wittenden]

Welcome to the site, Roz. I'm not coeliac, thankfully, but I do have problems with bread, and know what you mean.Often if I want a quick snack I'm limited to jacket potatoes.Not a real hardship, but damn frustrating.

[NickDavies]

I have found some hospitals unable to supply specialist diets prescribed by their doctors, what chance have you with pub grub ?
For these special items to be available you will often find the person in charge has a personal interest ,for whatever reason, in supplying them. Perhaps a family member or they themselves suffer from a condition that requires a special diet. I would think the average awareness of dietary problems is quite low when applied to bar and restaurant staff. Much the same on the High street. My town only has one baker making gluten free bread and I believe that is for special order.
Unless you are a fit and normally shaped Human Being you tend to cause problems to others who have difficulty in thinking " outside the box ". I just love that look of puzzlement on their faces.

You've little chance of ordering anything sensible "off-menu" anywhere that is set up to assemble factory produced food, which of course goes for all chain pubs as well as all those high street pasta/pizza chains and as you say much institutional catering contracted out to the likes of Compass and Sodexo. There are, of course restaurants in every neighbourhood which provide a wide range of vegetarian choices and where many of the staff don't eat meat themselves. They're called curry houses.